To hear air-brakes in the snow

It’s Christmas Eve already, and Nik’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Nik!) and the snow is beginning to retreat, though that didn’t stop a large truck breaking down on the main road outside in the middle of last night and keeping me awake by farting its air brakes every couple of minutes. Also on a downside today is the news that Dan O’Bannon is no longer with us. Amongst his contributions to the genre, not the least being his creative influence on Alien, one of the absolute highlights for me remains Dark Star, the student film he made with John Carpenter that went on to become a successful indie feature. It was a real team effort: O’Bannon worked as a scripter, editor and actor on the movie. If the name Dark Star means nothing to you, give yourself a Christmas Present and find a copy to watch. I remember seeing it for the first time around Christmas when I was, well, a kid. It had a lasting effect. My god, I just this second realised where I got the ‘to camera’ diary room pieces in Guardians of the Galaxy from.
Anyway, it is, nevertheless, Christmas, and we should think happy thoughts. As I lay in bed listening to the music of the air brakes, I thought about all the cool ideas I didn’t get around to using this year: the magical catering supply company called Witchkraft Services; the title “Horrorscope” (Andy and I ended up calling it something else, as readers will discover next year); a character called Drew Morgue (actually, that’s a lie, as he ended up sneaking back in somewhere else); the fact that an on-line identity of nonspecific gender may be referred to as s/h/it; and the phrase “like the galaxy, he had a western spiral arm”, which I just can’t seem to sneak in anywhere.
There were many others, and some are too juicy not to be reserved for later use. Thanks for reading this year, and thanks for all your generous support and encouragement. Please accept my apologies for anything that’s run late - normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
For some festive fun, frolics and chuckles, may I recommend you head over to Comic Geek Speak and listen to the podcast interview Andy Lanning and I did about our Marvel work (amongst other things); It’s over here: http://www.comicgeekspeak.com/episodes/comic_geek_speak-971.php We were in an especially silly mood. I believe Cor has already expressed an interest in catching up with the comic stuff, so I’ll just say that Marvel has issued both Nova and the Guardians of the Galaxy in numbered trade paperback collections.
I can also very much recommend a trip over to http://www.paulcornell.com/ where Mr C has been running his splendid 12 blogs of Christmas. Yes, I do turn up in the mix at once point, but that’s not why I’m recommending it. There are all sorts of diversions and entertainments, plus people such as Russell T. Davies and Stephan Moffat talking about Christmases and New Years, past and present. 
Right, half seven, time for the day to begin. There’s a cup of tea to make and birthday presents to be removed from hiding.
If I don’t see you before, Happy Christmas, everyone.